This I Believe

I believe in helping out others more then focusing on myself. But my story showed me that I should just keep my angry thoughts to myself, because it’s not just about me but others around me as well.

Over the summer my mom, a sergeat mother was pregnant with twins for my Aunt and Uncle. She had to get shots twice a day and take medication, which caused a lot of mood swings and made her tired. She had to be on bed rest for months and was also out of work. So I had to baby sit my little brother and sister most of the time during the summer and help out around the house because my mom could not do much. It was getting aggravating and I would lose my cool and argue with my mother about how I wanted to go out and have fun during my summer break and to not be stuck babysitting. But I knew that this was very stressful on the entire family not just me. But then on June 15th my mother was in labor all day with twin boys. This was very stressful indeed after the nurse and doctor told us that there were complications. Joey Gianni was born fine but then it came to the other boy, Rocco who was taken to intensive care right after birth because he came out with the umbilical cord in his hand and was not breathing. Right then and there I started regretting ever arguing with my mom about how I didn’t want to baby sit and help out, I just wanted to break down right there with the rest of my family because I felt so bad, but I knew that this was her day and she needed all the focus so I kept it to myself and hung in there for my mother. My whole family was there crying and hysterical but I tried to keep my cool and be there for my mother and tell her that everything was going to be fine and Rocco would grow up just like Joey to be two healthy little boys. My mother appreciated me not being like the rest of the family because it calmed her down and I figured she didn’t need the extra stress. But after it was all said and done I apologized to my mom for just thinking when she really needed me and all the help and I had told her that what she just went through was the nicest thing anyone could ever do, and for this I love her and she is truly my hero.

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.